


getting good at starting over

by waferkya



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Community: footballkink2, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>But he is old, Zlatan is right, he’s been old for a while, and Milan, Manchester, Madrid couldn’t even promise the things that Paris gave him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	getting good at starting over

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://footballkink2.livejournal.com/9768.html?thread=4327976#t4327976), which asked for "one last Becks fic".

They make a circle around him, grinning like children, and he tries to shy away from them, he does, because he doesn’t think this is necessary at all, but all it takes is Zlatan arching his eyebrows, just a little, and David gives in. He gets grabbed and tossed up in the air, and it feels so good he can’t even bring himself to pretend he’s not enjoying it.

The stadium dances in front of his eyes, a wall of pale lights on darker canvas, like fireworks in the distance, except every single one of those bumps is a person.

He used to worry so much about them—about the fans, swaying with drunken choirs and mismatched rounds of applause, and then about the whole world as well, all the people who know his face when he, instead, has never met them. He wanted, so desperately, to please them, and prove himself to an ocean of strangers so vast that sometimes, sometimes, it’s hard to believe it even exists in the first place.

He used to think, _this must be a dream_ ; he squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again, everything would be just the same: he still didn’t know everyone. Everyone still knew him.

It’s the same now, of course, but it’s different.

Hands push him up again, and for a split second, David feels like he could stop right there, hanging high above his teammates’ heads; except gravity is pulling him down already.

People have filled up the stands like air running through a lung. David stares at the blurry blotches of their faces and for the first time, he’s not afraid of the exhale.

 

“So, I guess that’s it,” he announces to the cheerful locker room, losing the flag someone tied around his neck during the celebrations. “I’m old now.”

Zlatan laughs in that ridiculously committed way that he has—deep from the throat, his head tipped back, hands on his flat, flat stomach. Laughing is the one thing that, with Zlatan, you can be sure he really means.

“No, not really,” he says, with a friendly slap to David’s shoulder. “You were old before, too.”

David makes an outraged noise, staring at him wide-eyed, and Zlatan just laughs again and harder. 

“Jesus, Zlatan, should you really go ’round calling other people old?” Maxwell, the cheeky bastard, calls out from a corner somewhere, and Zlatan is charging already, eager to mess around with him like it’s his custom when he’s this elated, but David waves a hand dismissively.

“No, Maxi, he’s right.”

He’s been old for a while, really; it’s just that he didn’t really feel it. If he’s being completely honest, he still doesn’t, but that doesn’t change anything.

Zlatan nods. “Thanks, old man. But I’m gonna beat him up anyway.”

“By all means, go ahead. I’m so old, I can’t really hope to stop you,” David says with a smart grin, and turns around just as Zlatan throws himself at Maxwell, straddling his back and making him yelp pretty undignifiedly.

 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and the smile that’s curling his lips makes his voice softer as well. It’s dark outside, except night is never really black or scary, in Paris; someone hung a velvety carpet to cover the sun, but it doesn’t make the city less alive.

David leans with his elbows on the balcony railing and looks up—he can’t see the stars and it’s a new moon tonight: he can relax. Nothing is there to remind him of the crown of a lit-up stadium where he’ll never set foot again as a player.

“Nothing’s wrong,” says Iker’s voice on the phone, but he sounds sullen, and hesitant in his half-broken English. David can’t bite back a smile.

“Out with it already, c’mon.”

Iker gives a long, suffering sigh; David pictures him scrubbing a hand to the back of his head.

“It’s just,” Iker says, then he makes a frustrated sound. “ _Ojalá todo eso hubiera acabado de manera diferente._ ”

David nips nervously at his bottom lip. “Paris is as good a place as any other,” he says. “Actually, no. They say there’s no place like Paris.”

There’s a huff of laughter, dry and brittle.

“The city of love. _Pero el futbol no vive allí._ ”

“Football is love,” David points out, smugly.

Iker snorts. “ _Ridículo_. You are, uh, the… worse?”

“The _best_.”

“Yes, that, but the other thing also.”

David giggles. “The worst,” he says, and Iker hums, mumbling the word a couple of times.

It’s not that David didn’t think about that—going back, to Madrid or Manchester, maybe even Milan; he did. He still does—he still wonders, he’s still stabbing himself one _what if_ after the other.

But the one thing he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to slip quietly out of his boots and into a manager’s suit; he wanted—he wants, he will always want—to play. Go out with a bang, or at least, a respectable amount of game-time under his belt.

But he is old, Zlatan is right, he’s been old for a while, and Milan, Manchester, Madrid couldn’t even promise the things that Paris gave him.

“I don’t regret it, Iker,” he murmurs, looking at the floodlit street ten storeys below.

“Yes, I know,” Iker grumbles back at him after a moment.

David didn’t really expect him to understand: Iker’s not quite there yet, to the place where every moment is spun gold and you have to count and keep track of every single movement you make. Iker is not there and he won’t be there for a long time, goalies are different, so he can’t possibly know—but then again, he’s Iker, and even if the empathy that comes together with captainship wasn’t hot-wired into his brain, he’s always been able to _get_ David, and most of the time they don’t even speak the same language.

David finds himself smiling at the city’s skyline. He doesn’t see the Eiffel Tower from, the balcony faces the wrong way—westwards. He’s pretty sure Spain is that way.

Iker is quiet for a long while, and then he asks, “Are you coming back now?”

“Yeah,” David says; he’s wanted to say that for years. “Yeah, I think I might do just that.”  


**Author's Note:**

>  _Ojalá todo eso hubiera acabado de manera diferente._ = I wish things had ended differently.  
>  _Pero el futbol no vive allí._ = But football doesn't live there.
> 
> Please excuse (and possibly point out, pretty please?) any major wound that I have inflicted to the Spanish language.
> 
>  
> 
> (Yes, I just really wanted an excuse to write about Zlatan.)


End file.
